The Reverend Fleming Rutledge is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New York and the author, most recently, of THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS (Eerdmans, 2004):
A splendid recent book, THE DOORS OF THE SEA: WHERE WAS GOD IN THE TSUNAMI? by David B. Hart, sharply criticizes the spectacle of people congratulating themselves for their magnanimity in the face of terrible suffering, as though human tragedy could be excused and explained as an opportunity for others to feel good about themselves. Surely Hart's point is apposite for the present Gulf Coast catastrophe, as celebrities speak unctuously of their own generosity and news broadcasters preen themselves as they go through the rehearsed gestures and use the stock cadences that they employ for every situation, from the most trivial to the most tragic (the sole exception being Aaron Brown).
We can learn something from observing the difference between artificial sympathy and self-aggrandizing gestures, on the one hand, and genuine empathy and active help on the other. The parable of the Good Samaritan is the model. The details of the story are remarkable. The Samaritan responds to need with practical, effective, unsentimental actions attuned to the victim's specific needs, and he makes certain that the sufferer will be cared for in the long term, guaranteeing his own return to cement the arrangement. In this parable, Christ is obliquely describing his own ministry to humanity. As the incarnate human presence of God, he is showing us the way we who live in the Spirit are empowered as his agents in the world.
As I write this on Day 5, leaders of the black community have begun mounting a powerful response to the chaotic situation in New Orleans and the media coverage of the disaster. This has been very heartening to see, because four days of television images of young black men looting and disheveled black people in dire circumstances has threatened to cause a severe dislocation in the national psyche. Whether they were conscious of it or not, viewers were absorbing the message, "This is the everlasting lot of black people, and maybe some of them have brought this on themselves by being poor, by being semi-literate, by being overweight, by having poor control over their children." The strong offensive today by African Americans in public life will go a long way toward mitigating that perception.
There remains the very difficult matter of class. Most of the American citizens who have been reduced to living like animals in filth on the street are poor, with none of the resources that many of us take for granted. Americans like to think of themselves as a classless people, and certainly our tradition of upward mobility is rightly valued; but we should all be clear-eyed about this: our vaunted American and Christian values will be tested more strongly in this situation than they have been in a very long time. God loves the people at the New Orleans Convention Center in a special way (God really does have "a preferential option for the poor"). May he move all of us affluent Christians who are sitting at our computers in our nice clean houses to open our minds, neighborhoods, pocketbooks, and hearts to the sufferers who have been swept up in a cataclysm less of their making than of ours.
The Reverend William J. Byron, S.J., is a research professor at the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Maryland. He served as interim president of Loyola University in New Orleans from 2003 to 2004:
This hurricane, like the tsunami of last year, prompts one to wonder how an all- knowing, all powerful, and loving God could let something like this happen. Some are wondering whether God is sending a message to the world in the harsh language of disaster. Why didn't God prevent it from happening? Who can say? Who knows the mind of God?
We have to be clear, however, and remember that there is a distinction between the positive and the permissive will of God. The God I pray to does not positively inflict damage and disaster; permitting it, however, is another story that leads to considerations of the uses of human freedom. It prompts thoughts, in the Katrina context, about our human responsibility for prevention and repair. Much of what happened in New Orleans could have been prevented by better engineering and stronger political will; the need for both is now urgent as recovery efforts begin.
Is God trying to tell us something? Maybe. God's message would surely be one of love. Love for the victims, love also for the rest of us survivors, rescue workers, caregivers, and observers who, in response to God's love, can now show ourselves to possess a faith, hope, and love strong enough to sustain the generosity, resourcefulness, and commitment needed to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast communities (not to mention the rebuilding that still remains to be done in South Asia in the wake of the tsunami). The need will be there for decades to come.
Those of us on this side of the globe, moved as we were by the spectacle of death and destruction in South Asia, should be thinking of ourselves more frequently and consistently as global citizens with responsibilities toward those on the other side of the world with whom we share the same human nature. We should be more inclined to share our wealth and technology with those in such desperate need. Enough months have passed since the tsunami hit South Asia to give us a fair measure of our seriousness in this regard. We don't have all that much to brag about.
Remembering the distinction between the positive and the permissive wills of God, we have to acknowledge that God did not strike in either of these instances; a natural disaster did. Why and to what purpose, then, did God, the creator of all things natural, permit it? I can't say and don't know anyone who can.
Depending on the quality and quantity of our response to natural disasters, however, we might come to see ourselves as somehow better off for the experience--larger of heart, more fully human, participants in a consciousness of human solidarity never known before. But the evidence for that will have to be measurable; it will have to become visible in terms of peace, justice, economic development, and love for one another.
There is now so much evidence to the contrary in our world, including the corner of the world we call New Orleans, that our hope is strained and our faith is being put to the test. Only shame can accompany our growing awareness that those most heavily hit in New Orleans were poor, black people living on the margins in a city that for years has displayed characteristics of a Third World country. Too many white, rich, and powerful people have been content to do nothing about the situation, just to coexist for years with the poverty and racism in the city we like to call The Big Easy. Not so easy now.
St. Basil the Great said, "Sin is the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good." How we Americans use our power now in rebuilding the Gulf Coast and the city of New Orleans has something to say about our prospects for avoiding sin and working out our own salvation. And how we use our intellectual power to come up with a way of neutralizing, destroying, diffusing, or dissolving slow-moving hurricanes long before they come ashore is not just a scientific and engineering question, but a genuine moral challenge.
I suspect there were doubters, even scoffers, when President John F. Kennedy said that within a decade we would put a man on the moon. Many thought it couldn't be done. I'd like to hear President George W. Bush make a similar declaration now with respect to neutralizing hurricanes before they hit shore. Perhaps it cannot be done; I don't know. Perhaps science holds no solution along these lines. But I'd rest easier if I knew that no scientific stone is being left unturned in the search for such a solution.
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